Welcome to the official website of Canadian human rights lawyer Richard Warman.

Latest:

19 May 2019
Just because.

9 May 2019
Mack Lamoureux of VICE Canada has published an expose of the fact that the City of Hamilton has been employing former neo-Nazi leader Marc Lemire for years. My concerns about things that need to be considered when looking at the issue are here.

6 May 2019
Glenn Bogue, the Law Society of Ontario, the Law Society Tribunal, and theTheatre of the Absurd. I didn’t think it could get worse in terms of how far the Law Society of Ontario/Law Society Tribunal hearings into unprofessional conduct by sometime lawyer Glenn Bogue have come off the rails – but I was wrong.

i. The expert report on the anti-women hatred from James Sears and Leroy St Germaine that filled Toronto tabloid Your Ward News can be found here. Many thanks to Professor Janine Benedet of the University of British Columbia faculty of law for her work in assisting the criminal prosecution.

ii. I note with sadness the death of former Ottawa Member of Parliament Paul Dewar. I had the honour of receiving my Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal from Paul and extend my condolences to his family.

iii. A murderer in Quebec inspired by hate propaganda has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing of six men at a Quebec City mosque in 2017. Statement from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network here.

2 February 2019

On 24 January 2019, Justice Richard Blouin found James Sears and Leroy St Germaine guilty of the wilful promotion of hatred against women and the Jewish community as a result of their hate propaganda published in Toronto tabloid Your Ward News. As part of the criminal prosecution, the Crown Prosecutors obtained an expert report from Professor Derek Penslar of the University of Toronto (and Harvard) that dissected the anti-Jewish hate propaganda and placed it in its historical context – more details here.

Dentist Kin Fong of Smile Design Ottawa is now a convicted criminal as a result of involving himself in detax schemes – full story here.

29 December 2018

2 Wilfrid Laurier U profs sue Lindsay Shepherd

Under the heading of ‘least surprising news ever’, two Wilfrid Laurier profs who were secretly recorded by ‘self-inflicted wounds’ former teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd have reportedlycross-sued Shepherd in response to a lawsuit by dubious U of T profJordan Peterson. Shepherd secretly taped Wilfrid Laurier University Profs Nathan Rambukkana and Herbert Pimlott criticizing Peterson and expressing concern to Shepherd that she had shown a video of Peterson in class where she was a TA. Shepherd then shopped the audio to media.

Peterson, unhappy with the criticism, launched a libel action against Wilfrid Laurier University and their academics.

When Wilfrid Laurier issued a press release confirming the filing of their statement of defence and its contents, Peterson the Petulant free speech advocate then filed another libel action against the University.

In this article and others about the original or subsequent lawsuits, counsel for both Peterson and Shepherd derides Wilfrid Laurier’s defence that Peterson should sue Shepherd for any damages given she’s the one who secretly recorded the meeting, broadcast it to the world through the media, and also reportedly consulted with Peterson before publishing the audio in which the academics criticized Peterson. Peterson and Shepherd’s lawyer is also reported as wondering why Rambukkana and Pimlott wouldn’t cross-sue the media who reported on the audio as well as Shepherd for publishing the defamatory remarks.

These arguments by counsel for Peterson and Shepherd demonstrate a weak understanding of the law of defamation given that Shepherd was the one responsible for publication of the audio to the media, and that any republication by the media would likely be covered by the defences of qualified privilege and/or responsible communication.

Lindsay Shepherd
@NewWorldHominin
Global News first released an excerpt version, and actually never asked me if that was OK. Then National Post released a full version on Soundcloud and copies were uploaded after by various accounts to Youtube. 6:55 PM – 31 Aug 2018

To be honest, it beggars belief for someone in a university graduate studies programme to claim they couldn’t figure out that the media might publicize an audio recording you give them to help publicize your case. In any event, lawyers for Wilfrid Laurier University have brought a motion to dismiss the action by Peterson as Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.

1 December 2018
Poor Dean Clifford, last substantive Freeman on the Land standing and still can’t get no respect. Now declared a vexatious litigant in Alberta in a case that he was playing puppet master for his latest victim, one Vanessa Landry who is also now a vexatious litigant for the sin of buying into and repeating Clifford’s nonsense.

Burnaby49 on the Quatloos website has as good a commentary as I might make, so it’s worth simply writing ditto.

The actual declaration by Justice Thomas of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench can be found here. Costs against Landry _and_ Clifford – ouch! Poor Dean…

29 October 2018

On the libel action launched by former UBC creative writing Chair Steven Galloway

A friendly asked me today what I made of the decision by former UBC prof Steven Galloway to sue a bunch of people who had made or repeated allegations of sexual assault against him in relation to a former student. Galloway was subsequently dismissed by UBC.

I didn’t know much about Galloway or the incidents at UBC apart from limited media articles I’d read previously, but tonight I read the claim and some of the surrounding background. I’m far from having engaged in an exhaustive study, but I sent the following thoughts to my friend:

1. Many of the defendants who are being sued for comments from 2015-2016 will raise defences that those issues are beyond the 2-year statute of limitations in BC for civil actions and that Galloway can’t bootstrap subsequent comments by others to get around that. Also that Galloway’s allegation that he couldn’t take civil action until now because of UBC-related investigations may not hold up either.

2. Galloway has top-flight legal counsel who has a great deal of experience about libel actions.

3. If the Statement of Claim is accurate, defendants who made recent (ie. 2018), outright claims of rape while naming Galloway on Twitter put themselves at some pretty substantial legal risk that I would seek legal advice on ASAP.

4. If the lawsuit goes ahead, the full investigative report into the incidents by Justice Mary Ellen Boyd will likely be filed in Court and become public – this may affect people’s positions depending on what it says.

5. BC has introduced anti-SLAPP legislation that passed First Reading in the legislature on 15 May 2018 and can be found here.

– Section 2 of the Bill mandates that if the Bill is passed, it will affect existing lawsuits that are ongoing and future lawsuits:

“This Act applies in respect of proceedings commenced at any time before or after this Act comes into force.”

– under those circumstances, I would anticipate that the day after the anti-SLAPP Bill becomes law that any defendants in the suit will bring motions to dismiss Galloway’s action as a SLAPP suit. The Bill mirrors similar anti-SLAPP legislation in Ontario and it provides a very high hurdle to successfully pursuing libel actions and carries substantial costs consequences against plaintiffs whose actions are dismissed. Libel litigation can usually be measured in years, so presuming the Bill will eventually pass, it will expose Galloway to a fair bit of legal risk when (if) it does. If it passes, the legal risk would be so high that I think that fine line between brave/foolhardy litigant would be engaged.

So, for what it’s worth, that’s what I think about the Steven Galloway libel lawsuit…

22 September 2018

It’s a party – congratulations to my former lawyer Pam MacEachern who was sworn in as a Judge of the Superior Court of Ontario yesterday!

Convicted criminal and British Columbia resident Arthur Topham has been arrested this week for breach of probation conditions that he stop spreading hate propaganda through the Internet. The probation conditions stem from his 2017 conviction for spreading anti-Jewish hate propaganda that the trial judge described as “vile and degrading” at sentencing.

“Harry Abrams and B’nai Brith have demonstrated great leadership in holding Arthur Topham accountable for his criminal hate propaganda attacking the Jewish community,” says lawyer and CAN Board Member Richard Warman.

Warman worked in cooperation with Abrams and B’nai Brith throughout the case and would like to thank the investigating police officers from the British Columbia integrated hate crimes team noting that “even Arthur Topham describes them as polite and professional – high praise from a criminal hatemonger you’re arresting.”

Len Rudner, another part of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network team, acted as an expert witness at Topham’s trial.

New anti-hate organization calls on Canadian law enforcement to investigate and
prosecute alleged neo-Nazi recruiter operating in Montreal

Toronto – A new anti-hate organization is calling on Canadian law enforcement
agencies to fully investigate a neo-Nazi who is reportedly recruiting from his home in Montreal.

According to an investigation by the Montreal Gazette, a prominent neo-Nazi figure
and propagandist named ‘Zeiger’ has been exposed as Canadian Gabriel Sohier Chaput
living in Montreal, Quebec.

“We cannot overstate how important it is to stand up to neo-Nazis like Zeiger, who are producing radicalization materials aimed at teenagers and defend the use of violence,” said Evan Balgord, Executive Director at the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAN).

CAN has been conducting its own months-long parallel but separate investigation into
Zeiger. “We are confident that there is a basis for criminal charges to be laid against Chaput, ” said Balgord. “We look forward to assisting the ongoing investigations into Zeiger’s activities and the alt-right movement in Canada.”

CAN is a non-partisan, non-profit which brings together Canada’s foremost researchers
on hate groups and hate crimes, legal experts, and leaders in communities targeted by
hate groups.

“Domestic hate groups are a growing threat in Canada, yet up until now, there has been no organization to counter groups like the alt-right neo-Nazis, Soldiers of Odin, Northern Guard, Blood and Honour, and the Worldwide Coalition Against Islam,” said Bernie Farber, founding board member and chair of the new organization. Farber is the former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress and of the Mosaic Institute.

“The mass killings carried out by Alexandre Bissonnette and Alek Minassian
demonstrate how dangerous these hateful ideologies are to all Canadians” added
Farber.

CAN’s mandate is to research, monitor, expose and counter hate groups in Canada, to
provide information to journalists, law enforcement, policy makers, and community
organizations, and to provide education and raise awareness of hate groups in Canada.
CAN has been endorsed by the renowned U.S.-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

11 September 2017
“Who’d have thought we’d have a Nazi problem in 2017? Richard Warman did.” “Punching Nazis With the Law” podcast with host Jesse Brown on Canadaland.